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Rainbow Trail revived

CHILDREN’S
rainbow drawings put up around Brookwood to boost morale during the coronavirus
crisis have been returned after being taken down from lamp posts by overzealous
Surrey County Council contractors.

The News & Mail reported earlier this month that local resident, Trudi Fletcher, helped to create a Rainbow Trail as part of a nationwide movement since schools were closed.

Rainbow trail organiser Trudi Fletcher is once again calling for children’s rainbow drawings to decorate Brookwood, after the original rainbow trail was taken down

Trudi put
out a call for colourful drawings on social media and received more than 50
rainbow pictures and messages, which she laminated and put on lamp posts.

A week later, local residents spotted workers using a cherry picker to systematically go around the village and remove them.

One of them, Justine Jaeger, tweeted Surrey County Council asking: “Could you help the Brookwood children who painted rainbows to lift everyone understand why Skanska removed their art from the lamp posts?

“If there is good reason, well and good, but we could very much like the art work returned.”

The
council’s Customer Services tweeted back: “I’m really sorry this happened.
Usually you need a licence to attach anything to a lamp post but following your
tweet we’ve advised Skanska not to take down any more rainbows.

“We’ve
also managed to track down the children’s pictures and our Highways team would
like to return them to you.”

Trudi said
it had been “an up and down week”, but that the rainbows were back to lift the
spirits around Brookwood.

“They have
been put back on the lamp posts which has brought much joy back to our village,”
she said.

“While our
pictures were missing we managed to get them printed again and SkateStation in
the village stepped in and offered their window frontage, so now it’s a win-win,
because we have them all in one place and also on the lamp posts – clearly our
rainbows do have a pot of gold at the end of them.”

Trudi says she welcomes more pictures – send
them to trudifletcher@rocketmail.com